I believe this is some sort of marker, and not actually "pronounced." The fact that it occurs on it's own, at the beginning of a couple lines, leads me to think it's some sort of "Tershay" or marker that is not read...it occurs at the beginning of the part of the text relating to the practice of "development and offering" for raising windhorse, before the title...and then after the title, before the homage.

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dzogchungpa wrote:It was just a guess, maybe the 'ka:' part is short for 'kara'. Also, isn't karmapa sometimes spelled ཀརྨ་པ་?

Yes, but the རྨ is one syllable. Dividing into syllables ཀརྨ་པ་ would be 'ka-rma-pa', although it is pronounced 'kar-ma-pa'.

As far as I know, རྨ is always part of a single syllable would never be pronounced 'rama' (or even 'ram') in any situation.

The groups of Tibetan letters separated by a tsek ( ་) are commonly referred to as syllables, but are more accurately named 'inter-tseks', as they sometimes describe more than one syllable, especially in Tibetanised Sanskrit.

conebeckham wrote:I believe this is some sort of marker, and not actually "pronounced." The fact that it occurs on it's own, at the beginning of a couple lines, leads me to think it's some sort of "Tershay" or marker that is not read...it occurs at the beginning of the part of the text relating to the practice of "development and offering" for raising windhorse, before the title...and then after the title, before the homage.